Braiding Sweetgrass

strong and together they flourished in the bosom of their nonhuman
relatives.
At the time of the Fourth Fire, the history of another people came
to be braided into ours. Two prophets arose among the people,
foretelling the coming of the light-skinned people in ships from the
east, but their visions differed in what was to follow. The path was
not clear, as it cannot be with the future. The first prophet said that
if the offshore people, the zaaganaash, came in brotherhood, they
would bring great knowledge. Combined with Anishinaabe ways of
knowing, this would form a great new nation. But the second
prophet sounded a warning: He said that what looks like the face of
brotherhood might be the face of death. These new people might
come with brotherhood, or they might come with greed for the
riches of our land. How would we know which face is the true one?
If the fish became poisoned and the water unfit to drink, we would
know which face they wore. And for their actions the zaaganaash
came to be known instead as chimokman—the long-knife people.
The prophecies described what eventually became history. They
warned the people of those who would come among them with
black robes and black books, with promises of joy and salvation.
The prophets said that if the people turned against their own sacred
ways and followed this black-robe path, then the people would
suffer for many generations. Indeed, the burial of our spiritual
teachings in the time of the Fifth Fire nearly broke the hoop of the
nation. People became separated from their homelands and from
each other as they were forced onto reservations. Their children
were taken from them to learn the zaaganaash ways. Forbidden by
law to practice their own religion, they nearly lost an ancient
worldview. Forbidden to speak their languages, a universe of
knowing vanished in a generation. The land was fragmented, the